Mapping the Upcoming State Election

Nov 22, 2014

Having realised I’d never seen a map of the electoral boundaries, and the division of Liberal/Labor electorates on a statewide basis, I thought I’d make some simple maps to see where the demarcations lie.

The Yarra

I found that more than anything else, the side of the Yarra River in which you reside is a huge predictor of voting intention. I had no idea that this was so stark!

State Districts in the Melbourne Metropolitan Area

But What About Degrees of Entrenchment?

I also wanted to see if there were geographical enclaves of entrenched views, one way or another. To do this, I took a seat’s 2PP margin, and (flip a coin) set an ALP margin as a positive number, and a LIB/NAT margin as a corresponding negative number. I then mapped out regions in blocks of 6.04%. While this is admittedly large, with Wendouree expected to be on a 0.1% margin, The Nationals hold Murray Plains with 30.2% – and I wanted to effectively capture the full range of margins.

I expect to update these maps after the election, and add some info from the ABS (which seemed to be having some trouble yesterday).